Posted on 12/03/2012 5:08:25 PM PST by Olog-hai
Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D.-Texas) said last week that Republicans are being “frivolous” when they talking about reforming Social Security as a means toward fixing the federal government’s fiscal problems because Social Security is “solvent.”
According to Social Security’s trustees, the program has operated in the red each of the last two years.
“Who wants to make a fuss about Social Security when it's solvent?” she asked on Friday. “And then who wants to make a fuss about Medicare when it's solvent until 2024?” …
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
If 0 bummer had a bunch of kids....... her IQ may equal their total.
Dimwit “progressive” looter BUMP!
DEPOPULATE socialists from the body politic. They are useless eaters in a free republic.
‘Rats nest...here...
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/caucus-members/
Overview of their socialist/collectivist schemes here...
More like "I can't be overdrawn. I still have checks left."
That is like buying insurance on a car while it still runs, or paying the rent when they can’t evict you anyways
Julia Carson here in Indiana was not only illiterate but senile. The only thing that got her out of office was dying. She basically went from the House floor to the funeral home.
I'm not disputing what you said in your first sentence. In fact, it makes sense. Social Security was designed to be collectively self-funding, but with a uniform payout. Logically, since financial circumstances vary with the individual, that means there had to be some people who paid more than they got in - just as there have to be some people who get more out than they paid in. Anyways, realization of that fact makes it very clear as to why Social Security has been compulsory. If the poker game can't stay solvent without the patsies, and is run by the government, it's inevitable that the patsies will be bound by law to stay in the game. What made it tolerable was the patsy earned more than the non-patsy, so the net beneficiaries benefited from sympathy for the fellow who has less and (to a degree) resentment of the fellow who has more.
But your second sentence is a quantitative statement. According to this link, the unfunded liabilities of Social Security alone (i.e., excl. Medicare) are $8.6 trillion over the next seventy-five years. If it were true that the shortfall was caused by piling on unpaid-for benefits, then the net present value of those unpaid-for benefits over the next seventy-five years would be equal to the $8.6 trillion shortfall. I don't have the exact numbers on me, but this 2010 report does distinguish between SSDI and regular Social Security. It says that SSDI "trust fund" is expected to run dry in 2018, which does add to your case, but it also says that the allocation reserved from regular Social Security will run out in 2041.
In other words, SSDI is only part of the reason behind the unfunded liability. Even if it were eliminated tomorrow, Social Security would still be heading towards the shoals albeit more slowly.
As I said earlier, I believe you when you say you paid more than you'll ever get out. But the way the numbers work, that isn't true of every Social Security recipient excluding SSDIers. It looks to me like good ol' human nature is kicking in, if you get my drift.
As a sidebar, you're experiencing life as part of a government-mandated collective. It's not all that coincidental that there's so much collective guilt floating around, given the number of purveyors of collective 'solutions' and collective 'justice'. Back in the day, rock-ribbed Protestants decried collective-guilt mongering as an excrescence of "Papism."
The death panels are a double win for the fedgov.
SocSec AND Medicare.
Cut 5 yrs off the lifespan and things look pretty good.
Don’t laugh, half of the old people on this site agree with her - at least until they GET THEIR MONEY BACK. LOL. As if any is left.
Who elects these dolts who have never seen a cash flow calculation?
Quite a trick 0bambi is pulling; nobody has caught on to his proposal to make the last two year’s payroll deduction freeze permanent. Effectively, it will phase out SS without telling anybody. Then when all of his little toadies go to retire, it’ll be “Sorry, you don’t get any because you didn’t pay into the system.”
She’s got a hyphenated last name and a “D” following the office she holds ... sorta screams “stupid” at you.
The death panels are a double win for the fedgov.
SocSec AND Medicare.
Cut 5 yrs off the lifespan and things look pretty good
And they’re betting on it! Just like the Food Stamp President and his administration of losers are counting on tackling the national debt through “inflation” (aka ObamaBucks).
Congress then wastes that money on GSA staff parties at resorts in Nevada and Arizona.
However, the funds coming in are accounted for in the fictional device called the Social Security Trust Fund.
Still, as fictional as it might be it accounts for a $2.7 trillion surplus ~ and is considered a debt of the US Government.
Social Security didn't go broke ~ but the US Government did, and the only issue is whether or not the US Government is going to pay its debt to the Social Security system so that payments to pensioners may be continued.
We have a President who imagines he can prevent the sale of government assets for the purpose of raising funds to pay government bills and debts. He imagines a lot of other things.
In the end the US Government has sufficient resources to monetize, or sell, and can pay all it's bills ~ including paying off the entire national debt.
Social Security is among the minor problems. The President's hallucinations are, however, serious business.
SOME DIE!
Oh, yes. In the cold world of actuarial number-crunching, that's already been factored in. The numbers remain the same.
The reason why I was going down the actuarial road was to spell out a hunch I had about Rep. Jackson-Lee's comment.
"Everyone done told me that they pay more then they get in. So what's the problem?"
The basic idea was that, actuarily speaking, Social Security appeared to be a device for transferring income from black men (who have the shortest lifespan in our society) to elderly white women (who have the greatest lifespan in our society).
Turned out to be pretty nearly the case until you looked at AFDC (aid to famiies with dependent children, or welfare). Then, the federal payment to black families from AFDC, actuarily speaking, pretty much matched the loss in Social Security payments by black men who died young!
Proving, I guess, that some popular understandings of these systems are spot on.
Even the 'death panels' exist ~ and they will guide care such that the elderly infirm die sooner. We all know that, even the Democrats ~ problem is the Democrats look forward to it. They've always been the party of death and slavery.
There's a funny irony about labeling Social Security and Medicare "thinly-disguised welfare." Were it, the system would be in a lot less trouble than it is. Up here in Canada, the old social democrats who first put together government-run healthcare saw it as something like a homeless shelter or food bank: a last-ditch alternative for people who had nowhere else to turn. In other words, people would be reluctant to tap the government unless something was really wrong. Had we Canadians really had that attitude, there wouldn't be any Medicare crisis. People would be too reluctant to draw down the system for the spending numbers to be what they are.
[And yet...there was already adequate private charity for the indigent. My grandfather on my mother's side, a surgeon, had months in the Great Depression where 40% of his billings went unpaid. Needless to say, he didn't press because he was charitable. The main reason why the soc-dems were pushing government heath care was because they were offended by the fact that private charities required a means test!]
To get back to my point: once Social Security, Medicare and the Canadian equivalents are seen as services for taxes, a different dynamic comes into play. Instead of tapping the government, it becomes "I'm getting what I paid for in taxes." That bumps up demand a lot because people - naturally enough - are far more assertive when they're sure they're owed. If they think they're charity cases, they're typically hesitant and reluctant. Not so if they see their taxes as prepayments.
Add to that good old human nature, that ole debbil that always says "I paid more than I paid and got less than I got." Again, natural.
The so-called entitlement crisis really unearths a weak point in democracy. When there's bad and widely unpalatable news, the only way politicians can do something about it is to become followers. They have to follow the people, and wait for the bad news to become too intrusive to ignore. Anyone who tries to put his foot down beforehand is sticking his neck out. Showing real leadership might as well be the equivalent of putting on the kamikaze headband and driving a plane into a warship. That's why the crisis, in the political class, is the most-known problem that nothing's done about.
In a way, it's unsurprising that the father of social welfare was Count von Bismarck and the first system was implemented in the German Empire. The Kaiser had the royal right to put his foot down in case the system got out of hand. He could not only use the bully pulpit, but he also could make life hard for the legislature until he saw something done about the issue.
But not in a democratic republic. Therein, you have to depend upon the rule of the people. In fact, this is one case where the people have to rule instead of the politicians.
Unfortunately, as you well know, the political class' "solution" is rationing. Hell-lo death panels.
Sure, at the peak of these confrontations Bohner will say briefly that ‘we spent the trust fund’ as he did on this weeks FNS show, but that is not enough to convince anyone.
A Liberal Democrat explains the why the Social Security Trust Fund is safe
It’s really worse than just some folks getting more than they paid in. For example, under SSDI, if you die young and have minor children, it’s my understanding that those children have benefits at least until they reach majority, and I don’t think that was a benefit at inception. Then there's the matter of illegals claiming SSDI when they haven't paid in much if anything. I would have been willing to take my chances with the equities market over my lifetime had I been able to opt out of SSDI and made my own way to retirement with my own money.
And just today, I read a piece about the next “move” the RATS are going to make is to “expropriate” our 401k’s (and the other “400 series” self-funding retirement gimmicks) that have been set up with the knowledge that SSI will fail at some point. There is reportedly $3 trillion in these accounts that the RATs can’t wait to get their hands on. The plan is to confiscate this money and give the “former owners” an annuity. Then what will happen is that they will immediately piss all this money away and ergo, a second SSI program goes bust! I am 72! I retired at 66. My 401k paid us 15% until 2007. We actually did not spend as much as we were making. SSDI didn’t matter. Then when the crooks on Wall St. stole the citizens assets in 2008, we took a 30% dump in my 401k’s value, and now what’s left is only earning 6%. So our retirement picture has been fundamentally changed at a time when we are not in a position to work our way out of what’s happened. It is therefore, my fervent hope, that the morons who voted for these Marxists start feeling some real financial pain.
Social Security is solvent? Sheila Jackass-Lee (Dimwit-Texas) is snorting solvents.
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